Floor Statements

Mr. President, this Chamber has before it a very important question: Will Congress embrace and exercise its constitutional responsibility to decide, as Madison put it, the question of war?

That is a heavy responsibility. It is no small matter to decide whether or not the United States should go to war or to decide whether or not to end a war. It is a question of blood and treasure. The lives of thousands can hang in the balance--the lives of soldiers on both sides, the lives of civilians.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 American servicemembers and the deaths of approximately 250,000 civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and they resulted in massive use of American treasure, some $8 trillion.

It is tempting for Members of this Chamber to shirk this responsibility. The question weighs too heavily on us. ``Let's let the President decide.''

But if you took an oath to the Constitution, as every Member here did, then you know that letting the President decide is unconstitutional. The Constitution did not assign this weighty issue of war to the President. It assigned this weighty issue to all of us here in Congress.

As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. The Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislative branch.

With studied care, the Founders said: No one person should decide the question of whether we go to war. The weight of the decision in blood and treasure is too great, so there needs to be debate. There needs to be viewpoints exchanged before such a significant action is taken. And that is why it is assigned to us.

Now the modern version of declaring war is to pass an authorization for the use of military force, or an AUMF. That is the system set up in the 1973 War Powers Act following Vietnam where there was no authorization ever granted, and yet a massive calamity for American servicemembers, some 50,000-plus who died and so many injured and so much treasure expended.

So Congress by law with the signature of the President said: Let's set up a system to take that constitutional provision where the question of war is assigned to Congress and create a format through which it can be considered. And that law--that 1973 law--says the power of war can only be exercised under three possibilities.

One, there is a declaration of war. Second, Congress passes a law and a President signs it into law to create an authorization for war.

And that, in fact, is what happened in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq. The President came to Congress and said: Here are the arguments. I want you to authorize war as required in the Constitution.

This Chamber and the House Chamber considered this question, and we passed an AUMF, an authorization for use of military force.

Those wars were entered into under a constitutional path. And whether or not any one individual agreed with the outcome, at least it was constitutional in that it was the result of studied debate here in this Chamber and down the Hall in the House of Representatives.

The War Powers Act creates a third option. Under a special condition--sometimes it is referred to as ``the condition of imminent threat,'' that we are under attack or on the verge of being under attack. The specific language in the War Powers Act says that the power of war can be exercised if there is a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories, or its Armed Forces.

But it places a 60-day limit on that. Now many experts would say this option was never triggered in this case because there was not a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. But some Members of this body have said: close enough. The threat from Iran was close enough. We consider that a valid third option.

I would disagree, but others had a different opinion and then said: but when that 60 days are up, that is exhausted and the President must withdraw forces as required in the War Powers Act or must come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, which has not happened.

So if the President fails to withdraw forces and the President fails to come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, then it is incumbent on us to pass a War Powers Resolution that says: Mr. President, you are in violation of the Constitution, and you must end this war. If you want to continue it, come and ask for constitutional authorization. The 60 days are up.

Someone said: Well, the war is not as fierce as it was previously. There is kind of a paper version of a cease-fire in place, and maybe that suspends the clock on the 60 days, a clock that expired on May 1.

But, you know, the War Powers Act does not have a provision that says if the war becomes less fierce, it doesn't count against the 60 days. That is not in the law. That is not in the vision under which this was prepared and written for the exercise of our constitutional responsibility.

And everybody in the world knows that the war has continued. The Navy--our Navy--has continued a blockade of Iranian ports. That is an act of war.

Our Navy has fired on Iranian naval vessels. That is an act of war.

Our Navy has fired on Iranian oil tankers. That is an act of war.

And Iran, they also have continued the war. They have fired on United States naval ships, including the use of drones, missiles, and bullets; fired on

commercial vessels; and fired on regional outposts, including the United Arab Emirates.

So the war has continued, and the 60 days has expired. And during those 60 days, a lot has happened; none of it benefitting our national security. We strengthened the Iranian hardliners, virtually what always happens when you assassinate religious and political leaders as we did.

We weakened the reformers. We failed to secure Iran's stockpile of more highly enriched uranium, and we have no strategy to extract them.

We have shredded moral leadership as champions of human rights. We enriched and emboldened Russia by easing oil sanctions; and not only could Russia then sell their oil legally at a higher price, but the war raised the value they could get from $60-ish to $120.

We depleted our munitions stockpile. We increased fertilizer costs. We raised prices at the pump for American families.

People keep saying: In our State, it is $4 a gallon and diesel is $5 a gallon. Well, in Oregon, it is $5 for gasoline and $6 for diesel. And we fueled inflation. Last month, April, the highest inflation in 3 years, 3.8 percent.

Those fuel costs are already affecting businesses. A number of airlines have cut flights and cut services. Spirit Airlines went out of business, forcing them to lay off 17,000 workers. And all across the country, farmers and small businesses and large businesses are seeing these inflationary effects and certainly American families are feeling the higher prices on everything. And we have spent from our national treasure somewhere around a $1 billion-plus a day.

During his campaign, our President said: I am going to end wars. I am going to lower prices.

But he has started a war, and he has raised prices. And now, if one embraces the War Powers Act, if one argues that there was an imminent threat--which I do not believe that test was met. But if you believe that test was met and you gave the President 60 days of grace--well, those 60 days are up.

And since the President has not come to us and said, ``I now want an authorization for war'' and we are not debating that on the floor, then our responsibility is to exercise a War Powers Resolution that says: Mr. President, end this war.

It is the right thing for us to do to defend the Constitution we took an oath to. Failure to do so is to violate the Constitution we took an oath to.

So I hope that at this point we will have bipartisan support to embrace the responsibility that the Constitution assigns to us on the question of war. It is a heavy responsibility. It is tempting to shirk that responsibility and let the President decide, but it is neither the moral thing to do nor is it constitutional.

Laws are not suggestions. The Constitution is not an option, not for the President and not for us.

There is no constitutional path for the continuation of this war unless the President arrives today with a proposal for an authorization to be debated. And that has not happened. The only constitutional path left is to vote aye on the War Powers Resolution.

An ``aye'' vote honors the wisdom of our Founders that assigned us this responsibility and honors our responsibility under the Constitution. A ``no'' vote dishonors the wisdom of the Founders who assigned this responsibility to us and dishonors our obligation under the Constitution.

Let's carry this weight, however heavy it may be, and in a bipartisan fashion restore and honor considerations that place--the Constitution places with us the question of war. An ``aye'' vote tomorrow is the right vote.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho made a few points in his presentation on why he would oppose exercising the War Powers Resolution, and I think it is worth noting those points and considering whether or not they hold water.

First, he said hostilities have ceased because the President says so, but it is the facts on the ground that matter, and the fact on the ground is that the United States continues a blockade--an act of war-- against Iranian forces. We have fired upon Iranian ships, and we have fired upon Iranian tankers. Iran maintains a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is an act of war, and they have fired on U.S. Naval vessels, and they have fired upon U.S. commercial ships, tankers. So it may be at a lower level than the massive bombing that occurred before, but there certainly is nothing close to what we would call a cease-fire and certainly not a withdrawal.

Now, the War Powers Act says that after 60 days, you have to end the hostilities, and you can ask for another 30 days to withdraw forces. Well, we are in that 30-day period now, and the forces are not being withdrawn from the Middle East.

The second factor is my colleague cited article II of the Constitution. What did he mean by that? He referred to the ``Commander in Chief.'' Article II of the Constitution says this in section 2:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and

Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several

States, when called into the actual Service.

When called into service.

And what does the Constitution say about when it is called into service? Well, that is in article I--article I, the powers of Congress, the enumerated powers of Congress, and those enumerated powers laid out in section 8 refer to many of the assignments given, including things like borrowing money on credit or regulating commerce or coining money or providing for the punishment of individuals, establishing a post office. But the key one--this very sizeable responsibility that Madison said ``with studied care'' the Founders vested this responsibility in the legislative branch, not the executive--that is the power to declare war. That is the responsibility.

Yes, once we go to war, the Commander in Chief is the President of the United States, and much of the strategy of the war is conducted accordingly through the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of the services. But do not confuse the ability to conduct a war with the ability to start a war.

Third, nuclear weapons. My colleague mentioned the threat of nuclear weapons. Well, there is a threat of nuclear weapons maybe, but you have to really kind of understand the framework here, and that is that there was a diplomatic agreement in which Iran enriched to only very low levels, a couple percent, under international intensive supervision with all kinds of monitors in place--not just individuals watching but all kinds of sensors in place. Their enriched uranium that they had previous to that agreement called the JCPOA was stored in Russia. So they didn't have highly enriched uranium. They enriched to very low levels, and they did it under international supervision.

It was only after President Trump in his first administration tore up this agreement and unleashed Iran from its responsibilities under that agreement. That is when Iran later said ``Well, we might enrich to higher levels'' and then proceeded to--up to 60 percent. But that condition only exists because of what President Trump did to tear up the diplomatic agreement.

Then, in June of last year, the United States participated in a massive bombing campaign, employed our very largest bombs to destroy those places where centrifuges were making the more highly enriched uranium. The President proudly declared that the massive bombs--the largest ones we have, the earth-penetrating bombs, the biggest tonnage--had obliterated Iran's nuclear program.

So Iran didn't have a nuclear program en route to a nuclear weapon until Trump tore up the agreement, and even then, the President claimed there was no nuclear program after June of 2025.

So here we are. What had been achieved diplomatically was destroyed by President Trump. Now he proceeded to say that he had already taken care of this threat that is being cited by my colleague as a justification for this war.

By the way, it was not the justification that President Trump cited at the beginning of this war. No. He said: Israel is going to bomb Iran again, and Iran is going to retaliate against regional sites, and that will involve our interests being hit, so we should join Israel.

So Israel was the dog wagging the American tail. Does America not have the spine, the courage, the authority to simply have told Israel no? Well, apparently not--not under this President.

I yield to my colleague from Virginia who has been so instrumental in bringing many, many insights to this debate and helping coordinate this series of War Powers Resolutions as we strive--strive--to honor the oaths we took to our Constitution.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to grant floor privileges for my interns on their shadow days, on the following dates: Violet Sheehan on May 13, 2026; Jack Schallich on May 20; Nensi Hayotsyan on June 2; Joseph Novak on June 3; and Aurelia Leowinata on June 10.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

As the Washington Post has pointed out, this is an all-consuming, favorite project of the President. It is a massive, giant ballroom to be built on the ruins of the East Wing, the ``People's House.''

I certainly agree that security for the President is absolutely essential, but this project was not conceived as a security project. It was conceived as a massive ballroom so large that it turns the White House into an auxiliary

dwelling unit. It is like the big mansion is the ballroom, and you have this little, tiny house one-fourth the size that is the White House. That is this gilded project the President was undertaking to put his Louis XIV ``I am a monarch'' stamp on the President's grounds. But we took an oath to a Constitution that doesn't have a monarch, and it doesn't have a King, and Trump is not Louis XIV, so I have a number of concerns about this.

First, my colleague mentioned that it is going to be paid for by private donations; however, a number of his colleagues have been advocating fiercely that it be paid for out of our Treasury.

Certainly $400 million buys a lot of support for education and housing and healthcare--24,000 kids going to Head Start, 52,000 children being able to benefit from childcare, and the list goes on.

The argument has been made that this would be a great place for State dinners, but we already have a great place for State dinners. We have the State Dining Room at the White House that seats 140. We have the East Room that seats 200. And State dinners are intimate affairs-- appropriately so--a conversation between leaders of our House and Senate and the executive branch, along with the leaders visiting from overseas--not a massive ``Let's turn out 1,000 people or more'' because of the size of this. Recognize that this is a 3.6 million-cubic-feet ballroom--about four times the volume of the White House. So State dinners certainly aren't a justification for this.

When it comes to security--well, the judge that took a look at the legality issues found that there wasn't authority for the President--in fact, this very bill being proposed by my well-intentioned colleague from Montana creates the legal authority that is lacking, and that is why it is being proposed--to be able to create that framework that makes it possible to overrule the court's ruling. But that judge did find that the security work being done below level could proceed because that part was related to the President's security.

This project is also about, in the President's mind, holding inaugurations. I am going to tell you that is probably one of the worst ideas President Trump has ever come up with--hide away the inauguration in a ballroom as opposed to doing it on The Mall.

I know that President Trump is very sensitive about the fact that a whole lot more people attended Obama's inauguration than his inauguration, so maybe he wants to see those moved inside to avoid any future embarrassment as he ponders whether he is running for a third term, which is not allowed under our Constitution. But what this type of ballroom does do--it is a massive fundraising scheme--a massive fundraising scheme. You can seat 1,000 people at once, all those people who make those massive donations and all of their friends, all those people who donate to campaigns. Oh, let's invite them to come be at this massive ballroom. But that is not a great idea.

Philip Kennicott put it this way:

Trump has previously been unable to convince the American

public that the White House needs an ornate entertainment

venue that would dwarf the historic mansion. Now he seeks to

convince them he can't be safe without it. This suggests he

plans to leave behind not just a radically transformed White

House complex but a different conception of the presidency.

And what is that conception? That conception is the President has the powers of an authoritarian ruler--of a King. They have a fancy name for it; it is called a unitary executive. And the President has proceeded to utilize 10 different strategies to undermine the checks and balances of our Constitution.

But building this Louis XIV, gilded ballroom for fundraising and to symbolize that the President is a King--hell no.

Mr. President, I object.

Mr. President, we are here at this moment to defend the Constitution, and the constitution of any nation is incredibly important in creating the vision of the checks and balances between the judiciary and the executive and the Congress.

But what really matters is whether the elected representatives actually honor the Constitution. Do they follow the words and the vision laid out?

You know, it is article I, section 8 that delineates powers, and in the course of it, there are three megapowers assigned to Congress. And one of those is the power of the purse: design programs, authorize them, fund them.

It is a President's job to execute.

The second is the power of taxation, including the power of tariffs. In fact, the first bill ever debated by the Senate was a tariff bill--3 weeks spent figuring out how they could reach agreement on what the tariff would be on a keg of nails or a barrel of molasses.

And the third, perhaps the most consequential, is the power of war. You know, it is just three words delineated--``The Congress shall have [the] power,'' and it lays out these responsibilities, and then it says: ``To declare War.'' Three words: ``To declare War.''

Now, if anyone thinks those were just some kind of bureaucratic phrase, you are mistaken. Madison summed it up and pointed out that, in the history of all governments, it is the executive, as the branch of government, ``most interested in war, and most prone to it.'' And then he summarized it this way: The Constitution ``has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legislature.''

So this is the moment we decide today: Are we going to actually follow the document we took an oath to?

Now, some of my colleagues have said: Well, the President also has the power, when there is an imminent threat to our national security, to act.

And I don't dispute that. Think about planes on the way to bomb the United States, or forces--a raid across the border on the verge of coming across.

But that was not the situation 2 months ago. There was no imminent threat of any kind, of any sort, anywhere near that exception.

Perhaps this war really is a poster child for why the wisdom of the Founders was so important, because wars go off in directions you never anticipate, because wars result in carnage--the death of Americans, the injuries of Americans, the death of the combatants we oppose, the death of civilians, and treasure vastly expended.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan--those misbegotten foreign adventures so poorly thought through--cost $8 trillion, the lives of 7,000 of our servicemembers, and 50,000 injured. That shows the consequences of war. But in those two cases, Afghanistan and Iraq, at least the President followed the Constitution, and this body, the Senate of the United States of America, insisted that the President follow the Constitution.

Where is that insistence right now? Where is the leadership of this Chamber defending the constitutional role of the Senate? Why are they not on the floor at this moment saying: We took an oath to the Constitution, and, damn it, we are going to follow it.

This war is another misbegotten adventure. It did not benefit in any way from a President's effort to persuade this Chamber or the Nation or the House of Representatives that this strategy had merit.

Every expert said you can count on the Strait of Hormuz to be shut down. Every expert said extracting the highly enriched uranium from deep underground during the middle of war is a near impossibility. ``So what is your mission?'' they asked.

But we didn't have those debates here in the Senate.

What has this war actually done? It has strengthened the Iranian hardliners; that is not a win. It weakened the reformers; that is certainly not in our interest. It failed to secure the stockpile of highly enriched uranium; so that is a failure. It shredded our moral leadership as champions of human rights; that is certainly a loss. It enriched and emboldened Russia. We actually took off the sanctions, allowing Russia to make even more money on the sale of its oil, at the very time that they continue to attack Ukraine.

It raised the prices at the pump. Oregon is at over $5 a gallon of gas. Maybe some of you are complaining about $4 a gallon. Well, it is $5 in Oregon. And diesel is $6.

And the agricultural community is suffering from vastly higher prices on fertilizer, and everyone is suffering from increased inflation on everything that energy goes into.

And this battle has already cost us in blood and treasure. We already have American servicemembers who have died. We already have more than 100 seriously injured. And it is already costing us directly a billion to $2 billion a day.

Now, four times we have come to the floor and said the debate should be now, because the Constitution is clear: There is no 60-day clause when there is no imminent threat, in the law. And four times, it has been a partisan vote.

There is nothing partisan about the Constitution. There is nothing partisan about the oath we took to the Constitution. There is nothing partisan at all about ensuring that the high risk of war is duly debated in this Chamber and following the advice of our Founders, including Jefferson and Madison.

But the President launched this war in violation of the Constitution, and so now is the time we have to respond. And it is in the War Powers Act that we can put up a resolution that says: Stop. You have violated the law. Come and get the authorization the Constitution demands. Come and do that.

That is what this vote is on today.

Not only did the President violate the Constitution, but he threatened a bombing campaign that would have resulted in massive civilian deaths. He threatened to bomb Iran ``back to the Stone Ages,'' and he said: ``A whole civilization will die tonight.'' He threatened massive war crimes as part of his unregulated campaign, unauthorized by this body.

So, to my colleagues, let's join together--united, Democrats and Republicans. We should have done so when Trump launched this illegal, unconstitutional war. We should have done so when 13 members died. We should have done so when we bombed a school and at least 175 people died--other reports have it much higher--and a whole lot of them schoolgirls. We should have done it when the President threatened to slaughter civilians and conduct war crimes overseas. We should have done it because it is costing us billions of dollars a day. We should have done it when the price at the pump shot through the roof. But most of all, we should have done it because the Constitution says it is our responsibility.

I recognize it is an uncomfortable vote because we are perhaps afraid to take this consequential decision and get it wrong, so it is easier to duck the responsibility we have under the Constitution, but duck we must not because it is our responsibility; it is on our desk; it is what the Constitution requires.

So let's honor that Constitution and vote yes and put up the stop sign and say: Mr. President, if you wish to pursue a war against Iran, then do what previous Presidents did in Afghanistan and Iraq and come and make your case and try to persuade us that it is in the Nation's interest. I think it is a very, very tough sell, which tells you a lot about what is wrong with this effort and why the Constitution requires that we weigh in.

I urge my colleagues: Do your job under the Constitution and vote aye on the War Powers Resolution.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we are here tonight because our Republican colleagues have introduced a budget resolution. It is a budget resolution that unlocks the reconciliation process.

But before we examine this next reconciliation bill, let's recognize that it has been just 10 months since we passed the last one. That was the one that was known as H.R. 1, or in Trump lingo: One Big Beautiful Bill. Of course, most of the Nation called it ``One Big Ugly Betrayal'' because that was a more accurate describer of what it did to families across our Nation.

It slashed a trillion dollars from healthcare programs--a trillion dollars from healthcare programs--for families. It kicked 15 million Americans off health insurance. That certainly doesn't help American families.

It took food off the plates of more than 3 million families with kids. You know, kids can't really do well in school if they are hungry; making them deliberately hungry--what were you thinking?

What were you thinking in destroying healthcare by a trillion dollars for 15 million Americans, taking food off the plates of 3 million families with kids, and to do it to fund tax breaks for billionaires? Wow. That is all about government by and for the powerful.

But you know why I love this country? Because it is all about government by and for the people. That is the vision our Nation was founded on. That is the beauty of a democratic republic.

But what did we get last year? We got the opposite. We got the opposite--the type of policy that comes out of a strongman state, the type of policy that comes out when the powerful exercise tyranny over the people--the type of tyranny our Founders revolted against when they created our Nation. That is what we saw 10 months ago: families lose and billionaires won.

And that is not all that bill did. It also gave 65 billion to Customs and Border Protection and 75 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. And that amount of money was about seven times a normal annual appropriation.

We can see here in this chart 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, all less than 10 billion; 2025, and there we are. So much more. The annual appropriation, plus this extra for ICE of an additional $75 billion.

And anyone looking at the chart goes: Wow. They already prefunded, for multiple years, ICE. They did exactly the same thing for Customs and Border Protection--CBP.

So we heard a few moments ago from my colleague at the head of the Budget Committee that ICE is out of money. Oh, really? Not true. That CBP is out of money. Not true.

In fact, the President's Office of Management and Budget puts out a monthly report, so go look it up yourself. They are sitting on $103 billion of unobligated funds.

So they already have funds for this year and next year and the year after. So the entire premise of this bill is completely false-- completely false. They don't need more money. What they do need are reforms about their conduct across America because they have been terrorizing our communities across our country because this administration said: No longer will you use

the standard practices of ordinary enforcement that have been the standard in our Republic and democratic republics across the land. Instead, we are going to start violating those standards. We are going to put on face masks. We are going to rip the ID off the uniform so you can't tell who we are. We are going to use vans that have no label on them, and we are going to sometimes even strip the license plate off in order to disguise who we are, not because we are under cover but because we don't want people to be able to say: Can you believe what happened when those CBP agents came to town or those ICE agents came to town? Hard to say that when they are not identified.

But those standards exist because there is accountability to the citizens of the country. Again, government by and for the people, not by and for the powerful.

There are things called civil rights that this administration has forgotten about. They proceeded to say: We don't need warrants to break into people's homes. Are you kidding me? Every sixth grader in America has heard about the Bill of Rights and that we have the sanctity of our homes, and the government can't break in without a warrant. But this majority party, led by Trump, said: Yes, you can. Forget the Bill of Rights. Forget the Fourth Amendment.

And then when we detain people, you have another right, and that is to contact a lawyer. But we are going to detain you and not let you contact a lawyer. We are going to detain you and not let you contact family.

And when family says: Where did my family member go that you-all swept off the street? We are going say: We don't know. We moved them. We don't know where. That is not conduct acceptable in a democratic republic with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights.

Well, since ICE and CBP have already been prefunded, since they are sitting on $103 billion of unobligated funds, what is this all about? It is about the majority saying: We want to drive home the point that we are just fine with the way ICE is conducting themselves. We are so fine that we won't reform any of those violations of civil rights or constitutional rights in order to have a normal budget process regarding CBP or regarding ICE.

Well, if we are going to have a special reconciliation process when ICE and CBP have already been prefunded, how about we actually address issues that America cares about because that extra money isn't going to help with the border because they are already funded.

It isn't going to help improve security because they are already funded.

But you know what is not adequately funded? Healthcare is not adequately funded. There isn't a dime in this bill for healthcare. That is important to the American people.

There is not a dime in this bill to help with the rising grocery prices that have gone up, up, up under Trump's stewardship--a whole lot of it impacted by his tariffs, which were themselves unconstitutional.

There is not a dime in this bill to address the gas prices, which are over $5 a gallon in my State, and diesel is over $6 a gallon. Go talk to a farmer across America and see if they are happy and ask yourselves: If we are doing a special budget process, why not address some help to our farmers who are impacted not just by the high cost of diesel for their tractors, they are being extraordinarily impacted by the tariffs as well. Why not help them?

Why not reduce the debt? This bill increases the debt. It is unpaid for just like the Republican war in Afghanistan was unpaid for, the Republican war in Iraq, going after nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, was unpaid for. They launched wars that undermine our security and cost the American Treasury $8 trillion of debt because they wouldn't pay for it, and now that debt is coming home to roost. And it means more interest payments, and it means paying higher interest. It means less money for those fundamentals for families, like healthcare and housing and education--the foundations for families to thrive.

So there is not a dime for working families, not a dime to improve affordability, not a dime to reduce a deficit or the debt; but there is, in this bill, the instructions to two committees to spend up to $70 billion apiece.

Now, my colleague clarified that they are not really going to ask for $140 billion but, more likely, $70 billion. OK. Well, $70 billion, that is a lot of money. What could $70 billion buy for America's families? Well, it could, every year for 3 years, pay the entire salary of 330,000 teachers across America. Wow. What an impact that would have on classroom size in our Nation--a real investment in our children for the next generation. Or that same $70 billion could hire 200,000 police officers every year for 3 years. What an investment in public safety for communities across this Nation. Or--we have been watching the dream of home ownership die. Back in 2020, the median age for buying a first home was about 33 years of age. Six years later, the median age for buying a home: 40 years. In 5 years, the median age has gone up 7 years because nobody is able to buy a home in America--in part because private equity is buying up all the houses and driving up the prices, and because our economy for the rich billionaires is not providing the type of wages for middle-class America it provided before.

So how about downpayment assistance to help people become homeowners? That same $70 billion, that would provide 7 million American families with a $10,000 downpayment grant to help them become a homeowner.

So 330,000 teachers a year for 3 years, 200,000 police officers a year for 3 years, 7 million families getting $10,000 downpayment grants. I make these examples to point out how large this sum is and how much need there is in America for us actually to invest in families--not tax breaks for billionaires but in families, in housing, in healthcare, in public safety, in education.

That bill 10 months ago--that bill was families lose, billionaires win. Families lost healthcare. They lost nutrition. Billionaires got massive tax breaks. And to help fund those tax breaks for the billionaires, their bill added--get this--$30 trillion to the national debt over the next 30 years. And if interest rates are 1 percent higher than the interest rate used in the Congressional Budget Office's model, it is $50 trillion in additional debt over the next 30 years.

So bankrupting America, failing to invest in families, going through this charade for two organizations that are already sitting on $103 billion and obviously pre-funded, that is not about building a better America. That is about families lose and billionaires win. That is about undermining the future for the next generation rather than building a better future for the next generation.

There is a better vision for America than families lose and billionaires win. It is families thrive; and billionaires, they pay their fair share. Families thrive; billionaires pay their fair share. Investing in education helps families thrive. Investing in healthcare helps families thrive. Investing in housing and home ownership helps families thrive. Investing in infrastructure helps build the physical infrastructure for the next generation.

But this bill says to hell with all of that; we are going to, instead, create this false story about unfunded Agencies that are already sitting on $103 billion.

Let's reject this vision that is designed for families lose and billionaires win and instead adopt the vision of families thrive and billionaires pay their fair share.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, time to get this show on the road, so I yield back all remaining time on the Democratic side.

Mr. President, my colleague from Kentucky is right that this bill is unfunded, that it adds to the deficit and adds to the debt. And maybe the best way to address that is not to send $70 billion to two Agencies that are sitting on top of $103 billion right now of unobligated funds. They couldn't even get started spending that massive amount from H.R. 1 last year.

But blindly slashing away at scientific research when China is producing four times the patents that we are producing each year, blindly slashing away at Pell grants, which, under this proposal, would be equal to 2 million individual students losing their Pell grants-- that is the type of detailed work that needs to be done in the authorizing committees and in the Appropriations Committee. This slash- and-hack strategy is way off base.

Mr. President, the bill cuts $16 billion from education. It doesn't say specifically where, but that is a good example of the type of thing that could happen.

Vote on Amendment No. 5378

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 5235 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, in the State of the Union, President Trump has told the story of Rachel Wiggins who had lost out to private equity 20 times in trying to buy a house.

After all, it is very hard to compete against an all-cash offer, fast closing, no inspection. The President said: I am asking Congress to act because we want homes for people, not corporations.

And the Senate did act, and they included in a bill--the ROAD to Housing Act--an element--and my compliments to my colleague from Ohio and my colleague from Massachusetts who worked together to get the element into that bill.

But right now down the hall, private equity is lobbying like hell to make sure that element never passes. We have an opportunity tonight to send a message that we agree with the President, that we have a challenge in home ownership because home ownership is dying, and one of the factors is private equity buying up the homes.

Mr. President, let's pass this amendment and restore home ownership.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Vote on Amendment No. 5235

Mr. President. I would like to thank the Democratic staff of the Senate Budget Committee for all their hard work on this resolution, both through extensive preparation and diligent staff work during floor consideration. Staff includes: Ben Ward, Mike Jones, Jill Harrelson, Josh Smith, Tyler Evilsizer, Melissa Kaplan-Pistiner, Misha Rafiq, Brian Lyons, Anna Barnes, Connor Jennings, Ethan Rosenkranz, Andrew Cobian, Anirudh Srirangam, Fiona Forrester, Lauran Pauley, Hilary Gelfond-Gross, Madilyn Shirley, John Bratton, and Mina Shahinfar.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Madilyn Shirley, Mina Shahinfar, and John Bratton of the Budget Committee minority staff be granted floor privileges during consideration of S. Con. Res. 33.

Mr. President, I rise today because our Republican colleagues have introduced a new budget resolution to yet again utilize a special process called reconciliation. We just voted a short while ago on a motion to proceed. That motion to proceed succeeded along purely party lines, and that takes us into the realm of this special device called reconciliation.

Just 10 months ago, we already had a reconciliation bill that is sometimes called H.R. 1. President Trump called it the One Big Beautiful Bill, but much of America has a different name for it. They call it the Big Ugly Betrayal. Why? Because it betrayed families in America to fund tax breaks for billionaires, and in the process, it added to our national debt. It slashed $1 trillion from healthcare programs for families. It kicked 15 million Americans off of their health insurance. It took food off the plates of more than 3 million families with children. Why? To give away the Treasury to the richest Americans. What other phrase could possibly describe this other than ``families lose, and billionaires win''?

But it isn't just today's families who lose from that bill; it is the families of the next generation because that bill added, according to the Congressional Budget Office's independent, nonpartisan estimate, $30 trillion to our national debt over 30 years, and that is only if their inflation or interest rates are accurate. They note that, in general, their assumption was that interest would not go above 4 percent, but at 1 percent higher, that $30 trillion in debt for the next generation, which essentially doubles our national debt, would instead be adding an additional $50 trillion.

I am sharing this because this bill--this second reconciliation bill during the Trump administration--builds on the foundation of the first. The first one was ``families lose, and billionaires win,'' but could this bill possibly be different? Not only is this bill not different, but its entire existence involves a betrayal of this Senate Chamber because the bill is based on a provision in budget law from 1974, the Budget and Impoundment Control Act.

Every single Senator who voted on that bill voted in favor of it-- Democrats and Republicans together--because the complete agreement was that it would be used only to decrease the deficit, and every single Member thought we needed to have an instrument to control the deficit.

OK. Fine. Well and good. That was in 1974. But in 1996, Republicans decided they wanted to give away even more treasure to the richest Americans, so they said: The problem is we can't do that because it increases the deficit rather than decreases the deficit. There isn't a pathway to do it because we know we can't get 60 votes to close debate on giving away the Treasury to the richest Americans.

So the then-leader, Robert Dole of Kansas, proceeded to appoint a Parliamentarian who had worked for him and who had also been around in 1974 and understood that the entire reconciliation was about reducing the deficit, and the result was a ruling that that core premise could be stood on its head. You could use reconciliation not to decrease deficits but to increase them. It meant you could do a massive tax bill giveaway to the richest Americans. That is at the foundation for both of the Bush tax cuts--or tax giveaways to the rich, maybe, to more accurately describe it--and to a similar bill that was done last year and to a similar bill that was done in the first Trump administration.

So here we are. In addition to impacting tax legislation, this change saying that this special device that everyone agreed was only for decreasing the deficit could be used to increase the deficit meant that it could also be used in the fashion that it is being presented by my Republican colleagues today.

So the pillars of that initial act are all being violated--the pillar that in the first 10 years, there could be no net deficit; that after the first 10 years, there could be no deficit in any individual account in any individual year; that the budget had to be based on real numbers, not phony numbers; and that the real numbers would come from an independent Agency set up by the bill at the Congressional Budget Office. But that bill last year, the ``Big Ugly Betrayal'' bill, toppled all of those pillars--immediate deficits, long-term deficits and long-term debt, using fake numbers on the analysis, all of it--so there is no foundation for accountability left.

That is the background for what brings us to today and to the vote that was just held in which the majority party said: We are again going to present a bill that increases the deficit and increases debt.

Wow. I must say this is not the way I would like to be celebrating our 250th anniversary. Wouldn't it be great if, on a bipartisan basis, we restored accountability to our national budget? Wouldn't that be a way to celebrate this anniversary and help create a foundation for the next generation to thrive rather than shortchanging the children of today, who will be adults in the near future, and shortchanging the children of the children of today? But there we are. Instead, the majority party has decided to celebrate our 250th anniversary by--well, by expanding secret police in America, because that is what the bill is all about that they have presented.

We know what the foundations are for families to thrive. It is healthcare. It is housing. It is education. It is good-paying jobs. We know that you also need investments in infrastructure in order to make all of that happen.

So will this bill that the majority just presented address the issues families are facing?

Will it be designed to bring down the cost of groceries? No, it will not.

Will it be designed to bring down the cost of healthcare, perhaps by restoring the tax credits that their last bill took away from millions of families? No, it will not.

Will it be designed to bring down gas prices, which are more than $1 higher than before the war was launched on Iran? In my State of Oregon, a gallon of gas is over $5 and a gallon of diesel is over $6. This is the Bush tax on ordinary families. Was it designed to bring that down? No.

How about to expand nutrition assistance--nutrition that was savaged in the ``Big Ugly Bill'' 10 months ago? Does this bill remedy that to help the children of America get enough to eat so they can actually study when they are in school? No, it does not.

Does it address the mass shortage in housing that has resulted in really high rents? No, it doesn't help that either.

How about investing in first-time home ownership to help restore the dream of home ownership because that dream has been dying? No, it doesn't address that either.

How about helping the United States prepare for unexpected disasters--wildfires? floods? hurricanes? No, it doesn't do that.

Does it, perhaps, reduce our debt? No, quite the opposite. It is unpaid for, and it increases our debt.

So nothing to help working families; nothing to improve affordability--a major crisis across this country; nothing to reduce the deficit and debt.

Instead, this bill is ICE and CBP--Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection--up to $140 billion. There is a set of instructions being sent to committee, and each committee is being told: You can spend up to $70 billion. Two committees. Seventy billion. That is up to $140 billion.

But when I say that this bill is all about funding ICE and CBP, you might say: Wait, didn't we do that 10 months ago? Didn't Republicans, on party line, pass a bill to give massive amounts of money to ICE and CBP just 10 months ago? And your memory would be correct.

This is the budget for ICE, and you can see that it increased modestly from 2017 to 2024, but look at this--an additional $75 billion, roughly equal to seven times its normal annual appropriation.

So it funded also CBP in a very similar fashion--only gave an extra 65 billion to CBP. So 75 billion to ICE; 65 billion to Customs and Border Protection. Massive, mega increase in expanding Agencies that have been empowered by this administration to operate like secret police.

So instead of this bill being used to address the concerns of families across America, this bill is being used to expand the operations of Trump's secret police. That is what this bill is.

Now, of this massive amount of money that was provided 10 months ago, how much has been spent? Now, you would assume, because Republicans are coming back and saying: This is a top priority in America, that that money--that extra 75 billion for ICE and 65 billion for Customs and Border Protection--must have been spent.

Well, now, the Office of Management and Budget, which is in the executive branch--it is run by Mr. Russell Vought, who was the chief architect of Project 2025 aimed at creating an authoritarian state-- they issue a report monthly. It is called monthly Report on Budget Execution. And the forms, for those of you who want the details, are called SF-133.

We looked at those forms for this last month, and what those forms say is that 63 billion of the ICE spending has not been obligated yet. It is not even under contract. It isn't that it hasn't gone out the door; it is not even under contract. And of the 65 billion for CBP, 40 billion is not yet obligated.

That means $103 billion of the money that Republicans gave to expand ICE and CBP is still available. So why the hell is the top priority in America getting another $70 to $140 billion for these two Agencies, as opposed to addressing all the significant national challenges that we have--all of the challenges that families have as they are pressed to the wall by the cost of fuel and the cost of healthcare and the cost of housing and the cost of medicine? Why isn't this bill addressing any of that? And instead it is providing $70 to $140 billion more for two Agencies that still are sitting on top of over $100 billion from last year's bill.

I noted that the goal of this bill is to expand the secret police in America. Those are strong words because ICE and CBP were not secret police before this administration, but this administration changed their conduct.

They turned them into a force that operates in secret and is terrorizing communities across this country--operating in secret wearing masks, operating in secret in uniforms without identification, operating in secret in vehicles that are unmarked and sometimes have had their license plates removed to make them as untraceable as possible, operating without warrants and crashing through people's doors, stopping citizens without cause--pulling their weapons, bashing out their windows, and dragging people out of their cars.

These are the tactics of secret police around the world, and they are happening right here in America, right now.

And in that cultivated manner of thuggery, they are not just pulling out their weapons; they are pulling the triggers. Ruben Ray Martinez-- shot dead. Renee Nicole Good--shot dead. Alex Pretti--shot dead.

The day after Renee and Alex were shot dead in Minnesota, two individuals were shot sitting in their car just blocks from my house in Oregon. We didn't know that they were mortally injured because the administration wouldn't release any information.

Thankfully, they did not die. The woman, on that occasion, was shot through the chest. The man was shot through the arm--sitting in their car just one day after Renee and Alex were shot in their car.

It is certainly clear that what these two Agencies need is not more money. They are sitting on $100 billion-plus in unobligated funds. What they need is more accountability. That bill should be on the Senate floor--the one that says no face masks, no uniforms without ID, no vans without license plates or ID, no breaking down doors without warrants, no invading sensitive places like hospitals and churches and synagogues and mosques and daycares. That is the bill.

What we need now is not more money. It is more accountability-- standard practices for the way public officials operate in a democratic republic. Instead, we now have standard practice of this administration for how secret police operate under an authoritarian organization.

My colleagues across the aisle have said: Well, we need to fund these organizations because they aren't funded. Well, clearly, if they still have $100 billion sitting in the bank, sitting in their accounts with the government, they are funded.

And as for the rest of Homeland Security, that is not funded because the House of Representatives killed the bill. In that case, I can thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who came together and said: Homeland Security isn't just about ICE and CBP. It is also about FEMA-- emergency management. It is also about TSA that provides support to get us through the airport. It is also about Cybersecurity, which is important. It is also about the Coast Guard. And the Coast Guard is so beloved in my home State of Oregon, as it is, I imagine, in every coastal city.

And so every single Senator said: Yes, fund those four Agencies while we continue to debate both ICE and Customs and Border Protection. We all agreed. In fact, the Speaker of the House agreed and said send the bill over. And then it got over there, and he got cold feet.

He got cold feet because he didn't have the support of President Trump, and he didn't have support of some Members of the most right- leaning wing of the Republican Party. That was the moment that Trump could have instantly made one phone call and that bill would have passed.

So if they are not funded, it is because the President chose to keep them unfunded, and the House of Representatives chose to keep those additional Agencies--FEMA, TSA, Cybersecurity, and Coast Guard-- unfunded.

In addition, this bill doesn't just provide 1 year of funding. It says: Fund them--that is, ICE and CBP--this additional funding on top of the $100 billion they still have--fund them for another 3 years.

Now, I would like to just remind my colleagues how extraordinary this is. Reconciliation was never supposed to be about spending money. It was supposed to be about deficit reduction, but now, we are taking a bill that was in the regular appropriations process and funding two Agencies for 3 years--that is their plan. And that is simply wrong because it means we are saying that in this--the start of the second year of the Trump administration--they are going to fund these Agencies through Trump's entire administration.

You know where this leads. There will be another administration in the future, and they will say in the first year of the administration: Fund all 4 years. Hell, fund 5 years--1 year into my successor--fund that. What does that strip away? It strips away the accountability involved in the budget process.

Further, going down the road, we are creating a vortex of unaccountable

spending and debt and a failure--a failure--to restrain this type of massive misspending of American money. It is our treasure. Our treasure is being spent, not for the things that Americans are concerned about but for doubling down on the expansion of Trump's secret police.

This vision of families lose and billionaires win began with Trump's inaugural speech. He didn't line up the champions for families behind him. There was no healthcare champion. There was no housing champion. There was no education champion. There was no champion for infrastructure in America. But there was a line of billionaires standing right behind the President. That is what this administration has been about: families lose and billionaires win.

Well, there is a better vision for our Nation, and that better vision is families thrive and billionaires pay their fair share. That is a vision--in a government by and for the people--that all 100 Senators should be supporting: Families thrive, and the rich and well-off pay their fair share.

Let's work toward that vision--not just in this year or in the year to come but for the next generation and the generation that follows.

Mr. President, on February 28, in coordination with and at the urging of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump attacked Iran without congressional authorization--that is, without the authority required under our Constitution. Almost immediately, Hezbollah, Iran's proxy, engaged in a battle with Israel. Now we have Israel invading southern Lebanon.

The Netanyahu government is exercising the same strategy they pursued in Gaza: Drop massive bombs, level entire towns, block routes for civilians to leave, and block access for humanitarian relief.

And the United States? We are partners in this. We are complicit in this--not just because we partnered with Israel to ignite the war with Iran but because we sold the bombs and the bulldozers that Israel is using. We didn't stop supplying the Netanyahu government with weapons years ago even when it became clear that they were deliberately targeting homes, schools, and hospitals; when they were blocking deliveries of humanitarian aid, including water, food, and medicine; when the result was mass malnutrition, particularly among mothers and children and the elderly.

We must not continue to be complicit in these tragedies by selling these tools of destruction--the bombs and the bulldozers--to Israel.

The administration says: Let's sell them 12,000 more 1,000-pound bombs.

Picture 12,000 1,000-pound bombs dropping on neighborhoods--that is what we are enabling--or a vast number of bulldozers to destroy homes and buildings. We have seen it in the West Bank--homes and villages bulldozed, ancient olive groves bulldozed--and now we are seeing it in Lebanon, with the Netanyahu government bragging about doing the same thing to Lebanon they did to Gaza: Make it uninhabitable.

Let's be clear. Bulldozers are not defensive weapons.

Recent satellite images of southern Lebanon show the Netanyahu government flattening towns, destroying bridges, cutting off civilian movement, and cutting off humanitarian access in a replay of the destruction we saw in Gaza, not to mention the Netanyahu government has supported settlers in their expansion, massive expansion, of outposts and settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, in their mass increase in construction of homes and villages, and most disturbing of all, supporting the settlers in their violent attacks on Palestinian communities--all of this in the goal of creating a greater Israel by destroying any prospect of a Palestinian state.

Let's not forget, as my colleague from Maryland mentioned, it was a bulldozer operated by the Israeli Defense Forces that killed American citizen Rachel Corrie in Rafah in 2003--the first of 14 Americans citizens who have been killed by Israeli soldiers since then.

Approving this sale of the bombs and bulldozers deepens our responsibility for these tragedies and for the suffering.

Colleagues, when we became Senators, we swore an oath to take on the responsibilities designated to Congress in the Constitution, including the question of war.

As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. Thus, the Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislature.

That is the Constitution we swore an oath to, and it is the Constitution that President Trump violated by launching a war without congressional authorization.

In 1973, during the Vietnam war, Congress approved the War Powers Act to, in their words, ``fulfill the intent of the Framers of the Constitution'' and rein in the President from waging wars without congressional approval.

The War Powers Act does allow the President to respond to an imminent threat that is ``a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories, possessions, or its Armed Forces.'' But in this case, no such condition existed and thus the violation of the Constitution.

Yet, earlier today, my colleagues across the aisle voted to allow the President to continue to violate the law and violate the Constitution. When will we say enough is enough?

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 minute to close.

Mr. President, let us today, all 100 Senators, uphold our oath to the Constitution. The indiscriminate use of American bombs in Iran and Lebanon and Gaza that targets civilians and infrastructure by Israel must end. We should not sell these bulldozers and these bombs to Israel.

I urge my colleagues to vote for these two joint resolutions of disapproval.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object.

Mr. President, I appreciate that my colleague from Ohio has come to the floor and said: Wouldn't it be great if we ensure that a paycheck is written for 2 weeks?

I have a better idea. We have far more than 2 weeks left in this particular year. The funding year ends at the end of September, so we are talking about something closer to 26 weeks. While there might be a cheer for 2 weeks, there would also be a lot of dread, and people across the Nation would be going: So the proposal is to fund for 2 weeks while the majority sends us out for a 2-week break.

Not until I finish my remarks, but thank you.

And so there are going to be two proposals by my colleague. And in response to one, I am going to suggest that we free TSA as a hostage.

TSA, right now, we are seeing hundreds of TSA agents quit because they are not being paid. We have seen thousands call in and say: I am not available for work today.

They are probably sick from the stress of not receiving paychecks. We can alleviate that completely for the rest of this entire year--this entire fiscal year--with a proposal I will put forward in a moment.

And then if my colleague has another proposal, well, we will consider that as well, but I will probably put forward a suggestion that we do all 26 weeks for TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard and Cybersecurity.

See, the debate where pushes come to shove is over ICE and CBP, and it is because of the rules of engagement under which they have acted have been so extraordinarily aggressive, terrorizing our communities.

So the conversation still remains and is underway about ICE and CBP and the reforms.

When I am done with my remarks.

And so the key here is: Let's release these hostages because TSA is being held hostage by my colleagues across the aisle, and FEMA workers are being held as hostages--

Madam President, and so I will just put forward the fact. I am not impugning anyone, just the fact that nine times Members of this body have come to the floor and asked unanimous consent to fund

--completely focused on--

Thank you, Madam President. I will just cut to the chase here. Just as my colleague's heartfelt desire is to get those paychecks written, so I, too, want to see them written. At the moment, we see the TSA agents in high stress. Our airports are causing stress for people all through the Nation, so let's get that piece done right here, right now in this moment.

Therefore, I would ask the Senator to modify your request so the Senate instead proceeds to immediate consideration of Calendar No. 362, S. 4127; that the bill which funds TSA be considered read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, may I respond to my colleague's questions?

Thank you. To his first question in which he sought to clarify that his proposal is retroactive--

Madam President, speaking to my colleague through the Chair in the ancient Senate tradition, the answer to that, as I already pointed out, is that I am going to offer two proposals: One, that we fully fund TSA, and we do it not for 2 weeks but we do it for the balance of this year through September 30.

And second proposal--

Madam President, just because I am answering the question--

--I think I have the floor for a question.

Madam President, has my colleague from Ohio objected to funding TSA for the rest of the year?

Madam President, has my colleague from Ohio objected to--

His objection is heard?

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I propose we fund TSA for the rest of the year. My colleague, as I understand it, has refused to agree to that; and, therefore, he has essentially objected. But he has asked for a modification.

I am happy to, at this very moment, propose that we go to a request which funds FEMA and the Coast Guard and Cybersecurity and TSA-- essentially everything except ICE and CBP--and the other Agencies are fee funded. I am happy to go to that proposal if my colleague is willing to fund FEMA and Coast Guard and Cybersecurity.

But I think he has been well aware that he keeps putting a poison pill in here. He keeps asking for Customs and Border Protection to be funded without modifying how they are behaving across the Nation, and he keeps asking for ICE to be funded without modifying their actions when they are operating like a secret police.

That is why negotiations are underway with the White House--over that issue. So let's stop holding FEMA and Coast Guard and Cybersecurity and TSA hostage. And I am happy to put forward a proposal right now that would fund all four of those Agencies for the balance of this year.

Madam President, I think my colleague can check and see that that is a fee-funded organization.

Madam President, I think, if my colleague checks, he will find that USCIS is funded through fees. And let me explain what a fee is. A fee is when--

Madam President, my colleague is engaged in a dialogue here that I would be happy to resume at another moment. He has rejected both my proposal to fund TSA--he has rejected my proposal to fund FEMA and Cybersecurity and TSA and the Coast Guard.

At this very moment, there is a ceremony going on to honor our police officers who protected this Capitol on January 6, and that is to honor a plaque that has been posted by the Senate, in a bipartisan way, and agreed to have put up when it was being hidden by the Speaker of the House in some closet.

And so I understand the points my colleague is making. I think the Senator understands the points I am making. I have countered his proposal with a proposal to fund TSA for the balance of the year. I countered his proposal to fund everything but ICE and CBP. And although the Senator has never said the words ``I object,'' I understand he is objecting through his dialogue. If I misunderstand that, please let the Senator say now that he agrees to my proposals and we will be done with this conversation.

But I really think it would be good for both of us, in a bipartisan way, to go down and honor the officers that protected the Capitol.

Madam President, my understanding is the second proposal funds everything but ICE and CBP is my understanding of the Murray bill.

Madam President, is that a question?

I would be happy to answer the question. Twice when I have answered questions, my colleague has reclaimed the floor in the middle of it. Does he intend to actually let me answer the question this time?

He is not responding--

--which means he is reserving the right to object when I get part way into the explanation to his question.

But let's be clear. Because of the sequence of events in which I proposed two modifications and he rejected two modifications--he rejected and objected to paying through the end of September the TSA. And then I proposed that we fund everything except for CBP and for ICE because those are the two issues under negotiation with the President, and he has again objected. And he is proposing a 2-week extension and then people don't get paid again.

So we are going to bring this to a close because essentially my colleague has asked me to participate in this debate. And it is very clever, and I have willingly done so; but I would think 26 weeks is a whole lot better than 2 weeks.

And so since my colleague objected to paying TSA, objected to paying everyone in Homeland Security except for ICE and CBP--because that is under negotiation with the House and with the President--I have objected to his 2-week extension.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I appreciate the information from my colleague from Ohio and my colleague from Utah brought forward. But just minutes ago, another colleague from Alaska was on this floor laying out the enormous difficulties that this very proposal would create, disenfranchising a tremendous number of people across her State.

Now, this is part of a larger bill that has the goal of stopping citizens from voting. It is targeted directly to making it very difficult for women to vote. It would proceed to make it very difficult for students to vote. It would make it very difficult for Tribal members to vote.

My colleague from Ohio mentioned the phrase: The goal is to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. But, in fact,

it is all about making it hard to vote. This broader bill is all about creating a national voter registration database that the administration has the ability to purge. They can then ding people, give them a little ping, if you will, and say: We stripped your name out. Try to go reregister. But, in fact, they can do that right before the election.

And it has already been laid out. You can't even register to vote under this broader law with your birth certificate. No, you have to have a birth certificate and something else.

They do say you can register to vote with just your passport, but that brings in a very expensive enterprise, and it takes 6 months to do that.

But let's focus on this particular piece. This measure before us proceeds to destroy the secret ballot. In 2024, 48 million citizens voted by mail. That includes the State of Utah that my good friend was just speaking from and representing. It includes the State of Oregon.

Now, those 48 million folks are told: You have to tell the world how you are voting because you have to put a copy of your birth certificate or your driver's license in with your ballot. So when they open your secret ballot, your name is inside there with the same document of how you voted.

Well, that is pretty troubling, this effort to destroy the secrecy of the ballot for 48 million Americans.

Now, my colleague from Ohio has a lot of studies and experience that I will acknowledge, and I am not familiar with all of the studies that he has conducted, but I am familiar with the study from the good State of Utah, an examination of 2 million voters.

That examination, done by his State government, found that there was 1 person registered who should not have been registered out of those 2 million people, but that person had never voted. So the number for amount of fraud was zero out of 2 million.

I am not sure if Ohio could even match that incredible level of integrity that Utah achieved to be able to have an audit that shows that zero people that weren't qualified to vote voted.

Oregon had a study that covered 20 years of voting--20 years. That is a long period of time. They found cases that were, if you will, potentially a problem in less than one out of a million. I am not sure Ohio could match that either, because the system of voting by mail has a lot more integrity than the system of voting at the polls.

You see, voting at the polls introduces so much opportunity for shenanigans. The people involved who don't want a particular community to vote--well, they move the precinct locations between elections, so people go to the wrong place. They put the precinct election places where there is no place to park--a deliberate effort to disenfranchise individuals. They proceed to put in machines that don't work in order to create long lines. Others have put out false information about the location and false information about the date.

This is a whole series of proven strategies to corrupt elections on election day. And that is why President Trump wants to shut down vote- by-mail--because it is easy to manipulate and corrupt the election on election day using these systems that have been well studied and well practiced in many jurisdictions.

Well, I value integrity, and Utah and Oregon have shown me that type of integrity. In fact, Utah's Lieutenant Governor--I might mention that he shares the party that is across the aisle from me--he noted that this bill would violate the State election law, which guarantees a secret ballot.

An assault on the secret ballot, an effort to be able to manipulate election day in a corrupt manner, an effort to rig the November election--that is what we are talking about right here.

This is absolutely wrong because we should be down here defending the high-integrity system of vote-by-mail, not trying to corrupt its secrecy or trying to stop it altogether.

Thus, Madam President, I ask that the Senator modify his request and take my amendment at the desk to be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Yes. Reserving the right to object, I noticed my colleague didn't answer the fact that student IDs are not one of those five, that Tribal IDs are not one of those five, and that nobody in the country can say any system is better than Utah's, which has zero cases out of 2 million. And I would guess a study of Ohio would find that it is probably not as good as Oregon and probably not as good as Utah. The reason why is because our States take so seriously integrity in the voting process. That is why these surveys show that the issue of fraud is either zero or vanishingly small--so vanishingly rare, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning.

This bill that they are presenting, this broader bill--it is not to address fraud; it is to make it very hard for targeted groups in America to vote and to make it impossible, in the broader bill, to vote by mail because they want you to have to vote in a system that can be manipulated.

I did notice he didn't address a single one of the six ways I noted that voting at the polls is often manipulated.

For that reason and because I believe in the integrity of our voting process and will not allow it to be degraded in this horrific fashion, I object.

Back in 2022, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking minors as Jeffrey Epstein's coconspirator in their horrific crimes against women and girls. She was a key person in the grooming, the abuse, and the rape of a vast number of young girls.

Bureau of Prison policy requires that sex offenders be housed in at least low security prisons. To explain, there are high security, medium security, low security, and then way down at the bottom--you know, think hotels--there is this minimum security.

Prison policy requires that minimum security is unacceptable for people who have been sex offenders--people like Ghislaine Maxwell--but then, in July of 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spent 2 days meeting with her in conversations that are completely opaque to everyone else in America, and suddenly, after these 2 days of conversation in which who knows what was promised, she was transferred to a minimum facility in Bryan, TX--otherwise known as Club Fed.

Now, in this minimum security facility, there is an athletic field, there are extracurricular activities, there is vocational training and access to service dogs. I guess that is pretty important to me because I love dogs, and I would love, if ever I was incarcerated, to have access to a dog. Hopefully, I will never be incarcerated.

On top of all this was a set of special treatments that she received after Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had her transferred to ``Club Fed.'' What kinds of special treatment did she get? Well, her meals were customized and prepared by Federal prison camp staff and then personally delivered to her cell by Federal employees.

When she wanted to arrange a private meeting with visitors, the warden personally arranged it for her. The warden, the head of the prison, personally was her personal assistant. And then she provided a special cordoned-off area for the visitors to arrive and an assortment of snacks and refreshments for her guests. Does that sound like prison to you? The special assistant, the head of the prison, arranges snacks and refreshments. It sounds more like a congressional reception.

Her guests were permitted to bring computers, an unprecedented action approved by the warden specifically for Ms. Maxwell. When Ms. Maxwell wanted to review and edit documents quickly, she was allowed to use the warden, Tanisha Hall, as her personal secretary and administrative assistant. Ms. Maxwell's correspondents would email documents directly to the warden, who would then provide them and deliver them to Ms. Maxwell, who could then review them and edit them and provide them back to the warden, who would then scan them and provide them back to the original sender.

For other inmates, even at this minimum security prison, simple mail can take weeks to arrive and is frequently lost.

An inmate who trains puppies to become service dogs was instructed to provide one of these puppies to Ms. Maxwell so she could play with the puppy, even though neither inmates nor staff are ordinarily allowed to play with the dogs in training.

And when she wanted to go to the prison exercise area, she was personally escorted there after hours--that is, after normal hours--by prison guards so she could work out all by herself and enjoy recreation time in the staff-only areas.

Folks, what happened in those 2 days when Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche went down and had all these private conversations--and, by the way, the type of conversations that are never held in that fashion by a Deputy Attorney General? Only him, with her. And now the head of a prison is her personal assistant, and she gets to use the staff area for her personal recreation. And she gets her puppy time, and she gets her meals prepared and hand delivered.

Folks, ``Club Fed,'' for a woman who facilitated the grooming, the abuse, and the rape of untold numbers of young women. This, my friends, is absolutely wrong. It is a slap in the face to every victim. The victims may not even be able to live in the way that she is living in this minimum security prison with the warden as her personal assistant. And so I think we can all agree on that.

So I ask for the Sex Offender Security Classification Integrity Act-- that the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of the bill that is at the desk. And it would ensure that a sex offender who under prison policy cannot be put in a minimum security facility could not be put into that minimum security facility the way she has.

Madam President, so I ask that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I will just note, once again, the failure to completely address the point that this bill is targeted at stopping students from voting, stopping Tribal members from voting, and that the broader bill from which it is derived is aimed at ending vote- by-mail altogether and taking away the secrecy of the ballot for 48 million people across America.

The fact that none of those points were covered speaks for itself.

Mr. President, my colleagues across the aisle are presenting what they call the SAVE Act and are saying it is about stopping noncitizens from voting, but that is not true. This bill is entirely about stopping citizens from voting, taking away the ballot box from millions and millions of Americans.

So let's call this bill what it really is: the ``Stop Citizens From Voting ACT'' or ``Stop Act.'' It is about rigging the next election, and we know so because Donald Trump said it himself. He said: You pass this act, and ``It will guarantee the midterms'' and ``every election for a long time.''

Why did he have such confidence that it would guarantee the November election for his party? The answer is because this bill is about stopping groups from voting who tend to vote for Democrats. This is, again, about rigging the next election.

There are repeated investigations by law enforcement, by news organizations, by universities that have found that you are more likely to get struck by lighting than for a noncitizen to vote. It is not just rare for a noncitizen to vote, it is super rare.

In Oregon, a review of vote-by-mail by the State over 19--actually 20 years, 2000 through 2019, found less than 1 in a million cases of voter fraud.

In Utah--my colleague who is presiding tonight is from Utah. Utah completed a citizenship review of its voter registration list of more than 2 million voters. They identified one noncitizen--one--and zero instances of noncitizen voting. One registered out of 2 million; zero voting.

Even Speaker Johnson admitted about noncitizen voting that ``it's not been something . . . provable.'' Well, actually, what he really should have said: It is not provable because it is rarer than rare.

That is why we know this bill is not about noncitizens voting; it is about stopping citizens from voting.

Let's just take a look at the impact, starting with the impact on married women.

The Republican plan: Stop married women from voting. A slightly softer version of that is, make it very difficult for them to vote, because this is what the bill does. It says that each State has to submit its voter registration database to the Trump administration. The Trump administration will go through and identify anyone it suspects might not be a citizen. And it has clarified that that means if your last name is different than the name on your birth certificate, you are suspect.

Well, where we are--69 million married women in America changed their names when they got married. That means 69 million American women get pinged by the Trump administration saying: We are not sure you can vote, and you are going to have to start from scratch and reregister.

Reregistering is very difficult. You have to have a passport or you have to have a combination of a birth certificate and another form of approved ID in combination--either a passport by itself or two forms of ID, one of which is your birth certificate, and that other piece has to be very specific, meeting the terms of the bill.

In Oregon, our estimate is that 700,000 married women would have to reregister to vote, including my wife. My wife's name is Mary Sorteberg. That was the name on her birth certificate, except on her birth certificate, her middle name is different because when we got married, she changed her middle name to honor her grandmother Rose. She would have a hard time voting. Millions of American women would have a hard time voting.

It is also about stopping Tribal citizens from voting. The ``Stop Act'' makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID to register to vote, and it makes it impossible to use your Tribal ID by itself to actually vote. You can't use it for registration, and you can't use it by itself to actually vote.

Tribal citizens are less likely to have a passport in the first place, and we know that many do not have a birth certificate. All across America, there are people who have been born at home who do not have birth certificates--more common in some Tribal communities.

Tribal communities are remote. Often, they have to travel a long way to get to a place where you can register to vote because you have to register to vote in person.

So all of these things are designed to make it harder for Tribal members to vote, and that is wrong.

This bill is also about the less affluent being able to vote. It makes it hard for them. Stop the less affluent from voting or at least make it much more difficult for them.

You know that a passport takes 6 months to get and costs about $165. That is a big toll. A couple, if they were trying to get that passport so they could vote, might not get it in time for the election, and they would have to pay $330. Wow. That is a poll tax on the less affluent to be able to vote.

If they can locate the county registrar and their specific county in America and if they were born in a hospital and if there was a birth certificate, they might also be able to acquire their birth certificate. That also costs money.

We know that the less affluent are much less likely to have a passport in the first place, and therefore it is much more expensive for them to undertake the qualifications of this bill. In fact, only one in five Americans who earn less than $50,000 has a passport. And we know that poorer States are less likely to have passports, including many States in the South--Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana.

So we are facing an attack on each of these groups, but those are not the only groups. Let's talk about students.

The ``Stop Act'' is designed to make it hard for students to vote. First of all, it says you can't have a voter drive. Why? Because you can't register people at their dorm room with ordinary documents the way it has always been done everywhere. No. They have

to go in person to an election center, and who knows where that election center is.

And they are going to have to miss class or go to do it, and they are like, well, why can't I upload these documents online to be examined? Well, because they are trying to make it hard for you to vote. Why? Because students tend to vote on the blue side of the aisle.

And if you need your birth certificate to register, now, if you are going to school in a different State from where you are registered to vote or where you would register to vote, you would have to travel home.

Well, many students don't travel home during holidays because it is expensive, and students often don't have money.

Oh, they are rich; they are fine. I am sure they will take a private jet to go get their voter registration.

But ordinary students, they are struggling to pay that tuition. That is a big imposition to say you have to travel to another State in order to be able to register to vote.

So here we are with yet another attack beyond these groups, and that is an attack on vote-by-mail. Under the amendment that has been filed by the Republicans this evening, it bans vote-by-mail.

Now, let's think about how hard it is to hold an election in a State like Oregon or a State like Utah that votes by mail. Oregon hasn't had a vote at a polling booth in 28 years.

So here we are. This law goes into effect immediately. Our primary election in Oregon is on May 20. How are you supposed to get all those polling places in place, all that whole new system, in just a few weeks' time? Extremely difficult.

And then you submit your voter database to Team Trump. They purge it with a very big bias to make it hard for demographic groups that associate more with Democrats to vote. They ping them and say: You are no longer registered. You have to reregister.

And maybe they get that ping. I don't know. The election in Oregon is on May 19. Maybe they get that notice on May 10. You have 9 days to get a passport. It is not going to happen.

You have got 9 days to reach out to your county somewhere around the country, where you were born, and get a birth certificate. It is not going to happen.

Millions of people are instantly disenfranchised in an impossible-to- set-up system in a few weeks' time.

Those groups that I talked about--students, Tribal members, the less affluent, women--this bill is targeted at them with extraordinary precision because this bill is about rigging the November election.

And that is exactly what Trump said: You give me this bill; my party will win November and every other election for a long time to come.

So, colleagues, this is wrong. Every one of my fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle knows what this is. This is an attack on a partisan basis to rig the November election. Every person here who took an oath to the Constitution to defend the right to vote knows that this is about rigging the election by stopping people from voting. It is really a violation of your oath of office.

So let's not let this happen--this egregious assault by an authoritarian President. We have already seen this authoritarian President take away powers from this body--the House and the Senate, Congress--that belong under the Constitution to Congress.

Our Founders said the power of taxation, including tariffs, belongs to Congress. This President took it anyway and said: I don't care that I am violating the Constitution. Challenge me in court.

It took a year for the courts to act.

He proceeded to say: I am going to cancel programs that are both funded and authorized by Congress--which is a violation of law and the Constitution.

It is the power of the purse, and he said: I don't care. Challenge me in court.

He proceeded to launch a war without authorization, even though the Constitution requires this body to authorize a war.

So here we are, three major powers--power of the purse, power of taxation, power of war--all stolen by the President and not confronted by the House or Senate leadership.

And now we have House and Senate leadership conspiring with the President to strip the vote from millions of Americans, an extraordinarily unconstitutional act. But this time, it is not the President acting alone. He is acting with the support, the cooperation, the partnership of the majority party.

There is probably nothing more sacred in a democratic republic than the ballot box. It is the beating heart of what it means to be a democratic republic. This bill takes a knife and stabs it through that beating heart.

Let's not let this happen.

Mr. President, our Nation was founded on extraordinary ideals.

Our Declaration of Independence said:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,

Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Our Constitution starts out with that vision:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more

perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic

Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the

general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to

ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this

Constitution for the United States of America.

Lofty ideals--the equality of individuals, a nation formed to create tranquility and prosperity, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty. That is an incredible vision.

And our Nation has been on an aspirational journey to realize those visions for 250 years that we are celebrating now, this summer, July 4, 250 years since that Declaration of Independence. But that journey-- that journey is a complicated one.

Certainly, when the Declaration of Independence was written, it was not true that all men and women were created and treated equally. They were certainly not treated equally.

We traveled through the journey of discrimination and prejudice of oppression, but we aspired to a better nation. We struggled with the challenges and the shortcomings. So our history, it is marked by extraordinary achievements, but it is also marred by significant failings. All of it is part of our journey, our collective journey, and no one has the right to erase it. Hands off our history.

As the lead Democrat on the Interior spending committee, I know the critical role that our national parks play in telling those stories of our complicated history, and they tell that story to millions of visitors each year. And those visitors go: Wow. So that is what happened, and that is how we responded to it to try to get to a better place or that is what happened, and isn't that something worth celebrating? And let's keep returning to those types of achievements again.

So we are often a bit stunned by knowing our own history, a bit inspired, but all of it creates a better foundation for us to go forward.

Alan Spears of the National Parks Conservation Association said:

As Americans, we deserve national parks that tell stories

of our country's triumphs and heartbreaks alike. We can

handle the truth.

And, yes, we Americans can handle the truth. There are nations all over the world with authoritarian governments that whitewash their history. But we Americans are better than that. We can handle the truth. We can celebrate the achievements; we can regret the mistakes; and we can move forward to build a better nation.

The Lewis and Clark Expedition began in Missouri and reached all the way to my State of Oregon. It was a triumph of exploration, but America's westward expansion also brought some tragedies: the destruction of Native Tribes, the slaughter of the American bison. And we owe it to our children and the generations to come to tell the entire story. We have faith in their ability to build a foundation of understanding that will support better decision making and a better celebration of our Nation, knowing it is based on the truth, not on some--well, some version, some fictional version of the past.

But President Trump isn't strong enough to handle the history of our Nation. He wants that purged version, that version where all of the kind of missteps are set aside or anything that might trouble the soul about something that happened in the past. Let's not allow Americans to know that. Let's hide it from them. Let's hide it from our children.

What a massive mistake to live in a world where citizens can't face the truth and where a President is terrified of the truth and wants to hide it.

On March 27 of last year, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14253, directing the National Park Service to review and remove what it considers to be ``improper ideology.''

``Improper'' means it doesn't celebrate our Nation and mentions some of the challenges that we faced along the way.

Following that Executive order, exhibits and information about all kinds of things started getting deleted from our national parks: Tribal history, women's suffrage, climate science, civil rights, the history of slavery, the history of Jim Crow--removed. The Trump administration is literally whitewashing the history of the United States of America.

Here are just a few examples of materials the Trump administration has purged from our national parks: At Independence National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, an exhibit about enslaved people who lived and worked in George Washington's home; at Acadia National Park in Maine, factual signs about rising park temperatures; at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, information about the massacre of Native Americans; at Muir Woods National Park in California, an exhibit about the role of women in protecting the park.

And not just exhibits but entire sites are in danger, like the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi. A Black teenager, 14 years old, accused of looking at or whistling at a White woman--he was beaten. He was mutilated. He was shot in the head, and he was thrown into a river.

Knowing that history makes one understand our Nation better. Pretending that there never was oppressive tactics inflicted on Black Americans steals the opportunity to understand our history and where we are today and what we aspire to.

A park employee warned: ``Without this exhibit to share the difficult [Emmett] Till story . . . '' the monument ``would be almost completely devoid of interpretation. . . . The exhibit emphasizes the `progress of the American' people toward a better future.''

Isn't that part of the understanding of things that go wrong? It helps us understand how we have moved forward, and that is an important piece because it says that we can move forward, that we have overcome some serious challenges of the past and moved forward; and, therefore, we can do so again in the challenges that we are encountering.

In addition to these exhibits, the Washington Post reports that parks across the country have flagged exhibits that, in an internal government database, include the Arches National Park, the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail, the Manzanar National Historic Site, even Ford's Theater National Historic Site, and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial right here in Washington, DC. Trump wants to whitewash all of that history.

Censorship is un-American, and it is damaging to all of us. So on February 24, my colleague from New Mexico--and thank you for launching this series of speeches--demanded answers from Interior Secretary Burgum asking:

How many exhibits has the Department removed or otherwise

altered?

You know, in November, when the administration announced that the parks were removing Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and Juneteenth but adding President Trump's birthday as fee-free holidays, I wrote to Secretary Burgum:

These alarming changes . . . are instead a thinly veiled

attempt to use our nation's most iconic landscapes to further

the self-promotion of President Trump.

Neither our national parks nor our national holidays should be about a President trying to glorify himself as if he is a King. We certainly should allow no President to whitewash our history.

In January, Senator Murkowski and I rejected the Trump administration's proposed fiscal year 2026 spending cuts and, instead, fully funded every single national park.

Let's understand that erasing history that doesn't center on those in power is authoritarianism. Erasing science at the request of a President is authoritarianism. Erasing the truth at the request of a President because it upsets him is authoritarianism. And we will not allow this authoritarian President to erase the history of our great Nation.

The Trump administration claims to love America, but you cannot truly love our wonderful Nation unless you understand our national journey, our triumphs, and our shortcomings.

Loving America means embracing our collective effort to learn from our shortcomings, to embrace the collective aspiration to build a better future, to aspire to the noble values we hold dear, the values that were expressed in our very founding documents of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, the value that we were created equal and that a great nation is one that provides opportunity for every citizen to thrive and that every citizen can fully enjoy the rights guaranteed in our Constitution: freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion and freedom to participate in shaping our shared future through free and fair elections.

Our national parks help explain that these freedoms don't exist for everyone in the world, but they exist here because we envisioned the possibility and we secured them. Our Founders secured them for themselves and the generations to come, and we continue to work toward that vision.

The freedoms are precious. We have won the birth lottery to be here as citizens of the United States of America. And it is our responsibility, the responsibility of every generation, to protect and pass on these precious freedoms to the next generation. Let's start by saying: Hands off our national parks.

Madam President, I so much appreciate the studied and thoughtful words of my colleague from Virginia, and I appreciate his leadership on the War Powers Resolution that we will be voting on, as he put it, within the next 48 hours.

My question is: Is the United States still a republic? Do we still have a Constitution that means anything? That Constitution assigns taxation authority to Congress, but this body sat idle while President Trump stole the taxation authority through his tariffs for a year. No other President even considered the possibility of stealing the power of taxation. They always came--including for tariffs--they always came to Congress because that is what the Constitution says. The responsibility is here.

The power of the purse is assigned to Congress in the Constitution. That is the defining difference between an authoritarian strongman government and a democratic republic. It is the representatives of every corner of the land coming together and designing the programs and deciding how much those programs should be funded, and it is the responsibility of the President to carry out those programs.

But this President decided not to. He canceled program after program that was authorized and funded by Congress--by law--with the words: I am canceling this program because it doesn't align with the priorities of this administration. Under our Constitution, the President doesn't get to do that, but this body sat idle allowing the President to steal the power of the purse, and yet we took an oath to the Constitution and did nothing to defend it when the President violated it.

And now the power of war. The Constitution assigns that power directly to Congress. Madison noted:

[T]he Executive is the branch of power most interested in

war, and most prone to it. [The Constitution] has

accordingly, with studied care, vested the question . . . in

the legislature.

And yet President Trump just launched a war. He didn't call it a strike or a limited strike. He launched a war. He called it a war. It is a war. It was a surprise attack. I was thinking about how we felt when Japan launched a surprise attack on Hawaii. Now, we have done that to Iran. Consider that parallel. And we did it while we were in the middle of negotiations. We did it while we were saying negotiations were going very well, and yet we launched a surprise, devastating attack that the President says he will pursue for week after week until the job is done. But what is the job? There was no imminent threat to the United States of America.

Now, on the way walking over here from my office, a reporter said: Marco Rubio has clarified there was an imminent threat and that the imminent threat was that Israel was going to strike Iran and Iran would retaliate against bases in the region so we had to go to war. Are we now such an enfeebled Nation that Israel decides when we go to war? And we couldn't just say to Netanyahu: Hell no, you are not going to strike Iran. Are we, like, on the leash--we are the puppy dog on the leash held by Binyamin Netanyahu? Is that what has become of the great United States of America?

And yet, if the information that I was told on the way here, that the argument now is the imminent threat that we had to respond to was that Netanyahu was going to strike Iran and thus the risk of retaliation and thus we needed to strike Iran first, well, what about the option of telling Binyamin: Hell no, you are not going to do that. We are in the middle of negotiations that are going quite well to end the threat that Iran poses in developing nuclear weapons. And by the way, they aren't developing nuclear weapons. And by the way, we had a diplomatic path that was pretty phenomenal.

Shouldn't it always be diplomacy before war? And we had diplomacy. Diplomacy--setting out an agreement in which Iran dismantled its plutonium reactor and filled it with concrete, in which they exported all of their more highly enriched uranium outside of Iran, an agreement in which so much was removed and so many inspectors were present to make sure that there was no nuclear weapon program. But who tore up that treaty? The same man who just launched a war in violation of the Constitution of the United States.

When Madison spoke and said ``the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war,'' he prefaced it by saying, ``The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war.''

What was he talking about? He was talking about the fact that a head of state may want to write their name in history by conquering land, a head of state may want to write their name in history by eliminating some foreign leader they don't like, and that, so often, those justifications are not in the interest of the country as a whole, and, therefore, there has to be a debate of the representatives of the country as a whole as to whether to engage in such a war. That was the wisdom, with studied care, the Founders vested in this Chamber.

I powerfully disagreed with President George W. Bush's war on Iraq. It was justified by an argument that there were weapons of mass destruction. And the inspectors in Iraq said: We will go anywhere and look at anything that you--the United States--think that there is a depot of weapons of mass destruction.

And the Bush administration said: Well, you are not looking in the right places.

And the inspectors said: We will go anywhere you want.

And the United States said: They are sneaking them out the back gate when you come in the front gate.

And the inspectors said: We will cover the back gate.

It seemed like the argument was terribly flimsy and yet possibly true, but at least George W. Bush came to Congress in the preceding year, in 2002, and said: I want an authorization for the use of military force because I am concerned about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And there was a significant debate here, and eventually it passed in October of 2002. And that debate carried the Senate to a favorable outcome of creating an AUMF by a 77-to-23 vote.

I do not think Congress reached the right decision on that day, but at least, as the Founders intended, it was debated here in this Chamber so that one person who might want to write his name in history by conquering some other foreign leaders, changing the dynamic in the world, conquering new lands--at least such an authoritarian leader must have their ambitions tempered by this Chamber.

But there was no tempering here. There has been no debate on an authorization for use of military force, as there should have been and as the President should have requested. And I hope, had we had such a debate, we would have come to a better, wiser conclusion than our predecessors did back in 2002.

This is an extraordinarily dangerous moment for America because we have a President who has repeatedly shredded the Constitution. He shredded it on taxation powers allocated to Congress by the Constitution. He shredded it by canceling the power of the purse, assigned programs developed by Congress under the power of the purse and ending them without authorization. And now he has shredded it by going to war in Iran without an authorization for the use of military force.

So we will use the one tool we have, the War Powers Resolution, to say: Mr. President, hell, no. And we should say

``hell, no'' at a minimum to say: Mr. President, if you want that power, come and put before us a proposal for the authorization for military force so that it will be properly debated in advance.

Presidents who squander the blood of our children and the wealth of our Nation should never ever be allowed to do so without the studied consent of Congress to address an extraordinarily dangerous situation.

Think about how many people died in Afghanistan and Iraq. Think about the 8,000 who died. How about the 50,000 who were so seriously injured. How about the $8 trillion--blood and purse. We must vote for the War Powers Resolution to say: Hell, no, Mr. President; end this war.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I compliment the minority leader for coming forth and saying what the Senate has agreed to do, which is to force the Epstein files to be released, which must be backed up by the force of law because we know that the administration failed to release half of the paperwork--some 3 million pages. We know that they blocked out whole pages in order to disguise, apparently, the protection of powerful men they don't want drawn into this discussion.

Then they proceeded to not redact the names of victims, as the law required. Let us not forget what this entire Epstein scandal is about. It is about powerful, wealthy men grooming, abusing, and raping young women and men. That is what it is about.

I cannot understand for the life of me why the Republican leadership just objected for us to seek enforcement of the law that we passed unanimously here. Why is the Republican leadership protecting powerful men? Why are they protecting the administration allowing 3 million pages to be held on to? Why are they allowing page, after page, after page to be blacked out to protect those powerful men? Why will they not respond to the fact that when these files were released, they did exactly the opposite of the law and failed to redact information about the victims, revictimizing so many?

This is 1,000 percent unacceptable, and it is unacceptable to our values as a nation, our values which talk about equal justice under law. That is why, by unanimous consent, we said those files must be released. But it is meaningless if the administration simply chooses not to comply and then my Republican leadership colleagues proceed to block the ability to enforce what the Senate agreed to pursue: accountability, justice for the victims, transparency over this horrific scandal.

Mr. President, I hope my Republican colleagues will reconsider their objection because what they have just done is wrong, morally wrong and wrong under the values of equal justice under law, wrong under the values of justice for those who have been victimized, wrong under the value of accountability for the perpetrators.

Mr. President, I call up my amendment No. 4287 and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, article I, section 9 of our Constitution puts the power of the purse here in Congress. Our Founders considered this the difference between a democratic republic where the people's representatives design and choose the programs and fund them and an authoritarian state where a King decides what the programs are.

The Supreme Court has reaffirmed that vision multiple times, including in 1975 when it said a President could not impound funds and in 1996 where it said Congress could not delegate the power of the purse because it is given to us.

But an aberration has occurred--an aberration in which a President can slow up funds, ask for Congress to undo the law that funded a program at the end of a fiscal year, utilize a grace period, and then the program reaches the end of the year and poof, like Cinderella's carriage, it turns into a pumpkin, and the work we passed by law and authorized by law is undone with no vote of Congress.

That is a violation of the Constitution. We have the responsibility to defend the power of the purse. Let's honor our oath to a democratic republic.

We are not an authoritarian state as long as we hold onto the responsibilities assigned to us by the Constitution.

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of the applicable budget resolution, I move to waive applicable sections of the act and applicable budget points of order for the purposes of the pending measure because it is our responsibility to defend Congress and the Constitution and preserve a democratic republic.

Vote on Motion

I ask for the yeas and nays.